Abstract: In this article, the principles of the Social Doctrine of the Church are presented as an expression of the inalienable human freedom. In contrast with the philosophies that interpret reality as a necessary and unavoidable process, because of its internal logic, the Church defends freedom as the interpretive key of all that exists. The Franciscan Friars Tradition has been especially clear in asserting this line of thinking. God is Love; that is to say a completely free and gracious Being. Created in God’s image, man is not inevitably selfish (homo homini lupus), as liberalism takes for granted, but a gratuitous fruit of divine liberty and therefore a free, creative and intrinsically social being. In this approach, the war of interests is replaced by the logic of Gift; the ethics of minimum by excellence.